Policy using fearmongering to sell a bunch of left-wing political aims

The Democrats led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released their “Green New Deal” this week. As Peter Schiff put it in his latest podcast, the Green New Deal is really red – as in socialist red.

The whole thing is an economic train wreck.

It’s masterful politics though.

The socialist wing of the Democratic party – that might be redundant – is asking for the world. Of course, they won’t get most of the proposals in the plan. They are politically and economically untenable. But they will likely get some things on their wish-list with the full support of Republicans. It will be a “compromise” that will only serve to move the country further to the left.

One of the nuttier things in the proposal – just to give you a taste – is to end air travel by building train tracks across the ocean. It also calls for a complete switch to EVs in like 10 years. See how this works? Raising the minimum wage seems downright moderate compared to trans-Atlantic train tracks.

As Peter said in his latest podcast, the plan “lays bare the smokescreen that I have always believed existed with respect to extreme environmentalism.”

In a nutshell, it’s a way to package socialism. As Mike Maharrey put it in last week’s Friday Gold Wrap, it’s a “green and red” New Deal. Some have compared radical environmentalism to a watermelon. It’s environmental green on the outside and commie red on the inside. As Peter put it, “They had to hide their red goals with green wrapping.”

“So, the way the socialists really tried to wedge their way into the mainstream was with this veneer of environmentalism. But when you actually read the Green New Deal, it blows all that smoke away, and it really lays bare the socialist agenda of environmentalists, because really that’s what the Green New Deal is all about. It’s red. It’s all about turning America into a socialist economy, or more particularly, a fascist economy because fascism is really the form of socialism that best describes what this bartender [Ocasio-Cortez] is advocating.”

“This is what every socialist who has risen to power, whether by force or by vote, has always promised the public. They always promise pie-in-the-sky prosperity – all of these great things that the government is going to provide.”

Peter makes a really good point – if the proponents of the Green New Deal actually believed there was an eminent, climate-induced disaster just on the horizon, they wouldn’t be promising all of this stuff. They wouldn’t be talking about all the great things government is going to give you – like more vacation and free education. They would be talking about sacrifice. They would be talking about doing without. They would be talking about real economic pain.
(Photo by Anthony Scutro/flickr)

“One can argue that fighting World War 2 was a necessary expense, but it definitely made Americans poorer than if the U.S. government hadn’t made those expenditures.

“Beyond their historical ignorance, he Green New Dealers are missing something pretty basic: If all of this infrastructure spending—which includes not just highways and other government property, but also revamping every single building in the country (!!)—is so economically efficient, then why does the government have to do it? The government doesn’t have real resources of its own. All it can do is transfer purchasing power (through taxing, borrowing, or the printing press) away from the private sector.

“Now if the Green New Dealers come back and say, ‘Well, private business doesn’t take into account climate change,’ fine. That’s the mainstream economics view, of someone like William Nordhaus. But at least those economists have the decency to admit that a carbon tax or other measures to limit emissions, will make Americans poorer relative to a scenario where global warming wasn’t a thing.

In contrast, the logic of the Green New Dealers’ rhetoric implies: ‘Phew! It’s actually a good thing there’s the existential threat of catastrophic climate change, because now we can do all these things that will create millions of jobs and produce social justice.’”

Clearly, this has nothing to do with addressing a pending disaster. It’s a way to use fearmongering to sell a bunch of left-wing political aims.

In his podcast, Peter digs into some of the provisions of this Green New Deal and explains what its implementation would mean to the economy. Make sure you give it a listen.